By the late 1960s, some of the bars appear to have become racially integrated, and in the late 1970s the Onyx Room was described as “predominantly black” in a directory of local gay businesses. However, the racial character of the block was not static. Louis’s LGBTQ social spaces reflected the Jim Crow practices of the dominant culture. King recalled that the manager had said he was afraid that the other customers would “get up and walk out” if he began serving Blacks. In her oral history, Georgia King reports that the bars were “all white” and that the manager of Shelley’s “nearly had a stroke” when she once tried to bring a Black woman into the bar with her. … is the Golden Gate Bar, also gay, but unimportant to us because it is where only gay men go, though that corner, too, is crowded with bleating adolescent homosexuals-male type.”ĭespite their proximity to Black residential neighborhoods, the bars on the 3500 block of Olive could be unwelcoming to non-white customers in the 1950s.
A few of them even wear jackets and ties, snappy. The butches sport suede jackets, wool car coats with wood buttons, shirt with turned-up collars, penny loafers or wingtips, nifty “pegger” pants …. Lush mouton coats the color of root beer cover angora sweaters.
The femmes-even the occasional homely ones-look so beautiful to us, like twittering Birds of Paradise. Louis, watching the grown-up lesbians parade in and out of Shelley’s Bar. “Baby butches, breath steaming and pluming about our shoulders, cheeks red, huddling awe-stricken on the corner of Grand and Olive in the sleety late winter/early spring of 1957 downtown St. Too young to enter the bars, they gathered outside on the street instead: In her semi-autobiographical novel A Crystal Diary, Frankie Hucklenbroich vividly describes visiting the 3500 block of Olive with a group of other teenage lesbians in the late 1950s. In a 1969 police report, a man arrested for dressing in drag outside of the Onyx Room asserted that “in this part of the city all the fellows are Gay.” Louisans found a sense of security and belonging on the block. In a world where they often felt alone and out of place, many LGBTQ St. You’d just hop from one bar to the next.” Grand and Olive was a place where LGBTQ people could meet others who were like them, pursue sex and romance, and build friendships and community. In an oral history, Georgia King-a lesbian who frequented the area in the 1950s-recalled that the bars there “were really something else. Louis area and beyond gravitated toward the 3500 block of Olive. For years afterward, much of the former Mill Creek Valley consisted of empty, grass-covered lots, earning it the nickname “Hiroshima Flats.” LGBTQ people from throughout the St. These establishments remained in business after 1959, when the nearby Mill Creek Valley neighborhood was largely demolished as part of a “slum clearance” or “urban renewal” project. Other LGBTQ and LGBTQ-friendly bars, restaurants, and coffeehouses were on nearby blocks. In these years, popular nightspots on the block included the Golden Gate Bar (later the Golden Gate Coffee House), Shelley’s (also called the Midway and Gus’), Act IV Coffee House, and the Onyx Room. Image courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
Louis’s first locally produced gay periodical. Published by the Mandrake Society, the Mandrake was St. Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library Special CollectionsĪn ad for the Onyx Room and the Gateway Coffee House from the March 1971 issue of the Mandrake.Scholarly Publishing & Digital Scholarship.West Campus Library & Conference Center.Kenneth and Nancy Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library.Special Collections Research Guidelines.Special Collections Collection Development Policy.We Got It Made: 1980s Sitcom with Gay Actor Tom Vi.Fall 2008: The Darkroom of the Gay Bar in St.They would set down their beer bottle, go through, and return a few minutes later. I noticed a lot of beer bottles by a door in the back, as if people were leaving them on the way to the bathroom, but it wasn't a bathroom. Louis for a conference, I went to the Spike (I don't remember its real name) on Manchester Street, in the gay neighborhood.īare brick walls, a small dance floor, a lot of guys in jeans hanging around staring into space, their beer bottles protruding like phalluses. I've seen the equivalent of a darkroom only once in the U.S. Even in bathhouses, private clubs with membership fees, you're not allowed to do things in public areas. State and local laws strictly forbid public sexual encounters. You feel around until you find something you like. It's completely dark inside, not even a safety light, although some guys walk around flashing the lights on their cell phones. Most gay bars in Europe have darkrooms, cut off from the main bar by a black curtain.